One idea that worked out really well: One of our members brought some individual-sized whiteboards and lots of colored markers for it. That way we could write a question on the top, and pass it around.
The first question we asked was for meetup activities you were interested in. You could write new ideas down, and also make tallies next to ideas you liked. We got a LOT of ideas this way, and we went through and discussed them quickly after they had been around the tables twice.
Off the top of my head: Camping, Hocking Hills (local park with activities like zip line and paragliding), “biased” board games, TED meetup (everyone submit a couple of vids), local atheist conference, karaoke, trampoline park, laser tag, vineyard, wall climbing, hosting a 2-day “Megameetup” (especially for all the OH, KY, IN people that live more than an hour away from our meetup locations), chess tournament, LAN party, etc
We also had a very surreal “Add something to this picture” pass. The final product was an alien riding an elephant, while a UFO abducts a confused, tipped cow (there had been a conversation about cow-tipping earlier...). A giant hand is rising out of the earth to grab the UFO (a bunch of us had just watched Pnova va gur Jbbqf). Meanwhile a giant asteroid/moon is blocking out the sun, and possibly about to crash into Earth. It is covered in flags, and encircled by people of all colors (and Cthulu) singing “It’s a Small World after All”. I think there was an Enterprise on there too.
We were joking about how many people does it take to consider an activity a “LessWrong meetup”? A lot of us come in pairs (roomies, couples, brothers, father/son, etc), which would make our entire lives one big meetup, lol. And a lot of the Columbus people hang out casually a bunch, since we “recruited” from our pool of friends anyways. (gaming, weight lifting, swing dancing, frisbee golf, movies or GoT nights, etc)
We broke into two groups to play Ergo (a Boolean logic card game where everyone is assigned a variable and you try to prove your own existence, while disproving everyone else), and Dominion. After the meetup was officially “over” we went to the lobby next door and played Resistance. On the downside, I don’t recall there being a lot of rationality discussion at this particular meetup, but we’ve discuss rationality things at most of our previous monthlies, so that was fine.
One idea that worked out really well: One of our members brought some individual-sized whiteboards and lots of colored markers for it. That way we could write a question on the top, and pass it around.
The first question we asked was for meetup activities you were interested in. You could write new ideas down, and also make tallies next to ideas you liked. We got a LOT of ideas this way, and we went through and discussed them quickly after they had been around the tables twice.
This is an awesome idea, I added a mention of it to the meetup booklet. Thanks for sharing.
We had an Ohio meetup yesterday. 11 attendees.
One idea that worked out really well: One of our members brought some individual-sized whiteboards and lots of colored markers for it. That way we could write a question on the top, and pass it around.
The first question we asked was for meetup activities you were interested in. You could write new ideas down, and also make tallies next to ideas you liked. We got a LOT of ideas this way, and we went through and discussed them quickly after they had been around the tables twice.
Off the top of my head: Camping, Hocking Hills (local park with activities like zip line and paragliding), “biased” board games, TED meetup (everyone submit a couple of vids), local atheist conference, karaoke, trampoline park, laser tag, vineyard, wall climbing, hosting a 2-day “Megameetup” (especially for all the OH, KY, IN people that live more than an hour away from our meetup locations), chess tournament, LAN party, etc
We also had a very surreal “Add something to this picture” pass. The final product was an alien riding an elephant, while a UFO abducts a confused, tipped cow (there had been a conversation about cow-tipping earlier...). A giant hand is rising out of the earth to grab the UFO (a bunch of us had just watched Pnova va gur Jbbqf). Meanwhile a giant asteroid/moon is blocking out the sun, and possibly about to crash into Earth. It is covered in flags, and encircled by people of all colors (and Cthulu) singing “It’s a Small World after All”. I think there was an Enterprise on there too.
We were joking about how many people does it take to consider an activity a “LessWrong meetup”? A lot of us come in pairs (roomies, couples, brothers, father/son, etc), which would make our entire lives one big meetup, lol. And a lot of the Columbus people hang out casually a bunch, since we “recruited” from our pool of friends anyways. (gaming, weight lifting, swing dancing, frisbee golf, movies or GoT nights, etc)
We broke into two groups to play Ergo (a Boolean logic card game where everyone is assigned a variable and you try to prove your own existence, while disproving everyone else), and Dominion. After the meetup was officially “over” we went to the lobby next door and played Resistance. On the downside, I don’t recall there being a lot of rationality discussion at this particular meetup, but we’ve discuss rationality things at most of our previous monthlies, so that was fine.
This is an awesome idea, I added a mention of it to the meetup booklet. Thanks for sharing.